The seemingly never ending raccoon battle…new pics

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Thanks E!

penny and I went right up to the mouth of the den. I’ve never been up there. The den goes straight down into blackness. I think she pretty much fell back into the hole. 

I won’t lie, it was a little weird being up there, standing up on top of that old bridge pile. I can only imagine the caverns down there underneath. 

In my opinion still with no blood, I think she’s dead. I saw her fall. The only way I’m going to be able to confirm it at this point, is by looking at what shows up next. Obviously, it’s a mom and last year’s kids. She would not let them out the door of that den, until she went and checked things out. The same will hold true at the next visit. If mom walks out first, I missed. if the Younguns come out on their own, I believe that confirms a kill.

mike


 
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@Flintsack I just got caught up. Wow! Great story so far. You really pulled me into this scenario with you. The only thing I’m confused about is the jelly jar. As I understood what you wrote, you threw the jar 12’, but it somehow exploded and got jelly on your snow/white camo? How did that happen from 12’ away? After looking at a picture of the snow-covered bridge, I probably would’ve steered clear of trying to walk on or beneath it as well. Hard to tell what shape it is in covered in snow. 
 
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More terrain pics

E. I was trying to throw the peanut butter jar really hard all the way across the draw, and instead I hit a tree 12 feet in front of me on my side of the draw, and it blew up, bad throw.

By the way, yesterday after I shot the raccoon, I shot the peanut butter jar twice in a row just to validate my zero.

q

there’s a pretty precipitous drop about 10 feet in front of the den. I brought a couple cups of peanuts out there today with a cup of brown sugar on top and put that around 6 to 8 feet from the den. I’m going for head shots. I should’ve waited until she came out five more feet, it was getting dark. The hunter took over.

I think Penny senses my seriousness. She was my canary in a coal mine when I set the shotgun down to take the pictures. I know that there were at least four of them right below me.

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@Flintsack 😅 I had to laugh at that toss. You wouldn’t be the first hunter to shoot one before the coon exited its den good. I don’t blame you. I certainly would not suggest that someone go down beneath that sort of icy rubble to look for a carcass if it wasn’t visible and they couldn’t identify a safe path down unless their meal was dependent upon that animal. Y’all have some big animals up there. 
 
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As I mentioned in the title change, last night I watched the raccoon eat my hotdog or at least take it into his den. It’s definitely the small one. I would guess 20 pounds.

I think I was expecting him to sit down and gorge on the hotdog in front of me. It was already getting pretty dark, and he slinked out of his den walked the 5 feet to the hot dog 🌭, grabbed it out of the snow and bolted back into the den. No shot was taken.

There were about nine more hotdogs out there last night. I’m sure he dined really well after I left. I never got a look at him again after he stole that one hotdog.

So today I broke the hotdogs into little pieces.

by the time I got out there tonight, he was already out of his den. I almost stopped at 80 yards and whacked him, but I wanted to get closer. I got to my 60 yards spot, snuggled into my log, and he had gone back into the den.

then the horses came out in the pasture right behind the den

So of course the raccoon came out and walked around and gave me all kinds of great shots that I couldn’t take. So I watched. Right at dark the horse🐴 left. That scared him back inside.

He had to come out to get more hotdogs. He did, it was closer to dark. I decided to end it. I took him right in the thoracic cavity. At 60 yards with no wind. I heard the lead smack into him, and watched him dive into the den to join his mom. It was too dark to go for a headshot. And this way I don’t have to dispose of the body.

I’ll be out again the next couple nights with hotdogs just to be sure.

mike


 
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I put the hotdogs out at 4 o’clock or so. So basically I was walking around on their ceiling a couple of hours before dusk.

I break them into pieces now, that works much better. I scatter them about five or 6 feet on my side of the den. And I dropped one little half inch piece inside the den for luck 🍀. It sounded like it dropped 15 to 20 feet before it hit. I think it’s a vast cavern down there underneath the pieces of the bridge.

E, I hope once summer hits they won’t be able to stand it in there from the rot of the bodies.

I decided to just watch out the window. So I checked in about every five minutes right around dusk.

As you would expect, there was a big fat blob eating hotdogs when I looked around 5:55.

I grabbed the Delta Wolf, which was all set up and ready for me, and run as fast as I can through the snow, so I can get there before she finishes all the hot dogs. There was no stealth. It wasn’t needed. She of course ducked down in the den. 


It took her about 10 minutes to come back out. She looked around and walked right over to the hotdogs and started eating. She gave me a perfect profile, actually looked slightly away from me…And I dropped her like a bad habit. She went down like a ton of bricks. Absolutely no movement. It looked exactly like the big boar did disappearing from my scope a few days ago. Only this one didn’t fall inside the den. This time we have a body count.

It was kind of interesting. I was watching the body lie they’re dead still, and one of the legs moved an inch…I have watched so many different videos of guys shooting animals on this channel, and I’m always thinking - put one more Into him! So I did, right into the thoracic cavity. Which caused an instantaneous death dance, which surprised me.

It was perfectly calm, right at dusk. The crosshairs were steady as a rock when I pulled the trigger.

The Delta Wolf 🐺 is getting broken in right!

I wonder if there’s one more? I thought I saw four one night.

This one was also smaller than the last, which makes sense right? We’re getting them in order of aggression.

mike

better pics tomorrow 

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Same as always, I put out the hotdogs around 4 o’clock. Started checking on things through the binoculars around 515, every five minutes or so.

right around dusk, I see a fisher sitting up there chewing on my hotdogs…I’ve spent all day today during my breaks googling fishers. They sound like the MF of the varmint world. I go into full blown Fisher alert!

Btw, I was sure I saw a fisher like animal a half an hour to 45 minutes after dark the other night. It was really weird. Like watching a wraith. Then my neighbor up north started talking about one on my other post. And there he was.

He would be way too smart for me to do a sneak on like I did with the raccoon. But out the window, at 200 yards he would be dead meat with the proper powder burner. I go for my deer rifle. A 270. Then I remembered, it’s cited in at 300 yards. No good. I head upstairs for the 17 hornet, perfect medicine…

I’ve burned quite a bit of time at this point running around like a crazy man. I decided I better check to see if he still there - And there he is, One of the biggest skunks I’ve ever seen, heading down the hill after obviously consuming all of the hotdogs. The power of the mind and suggestion.

So I grabbed the D wolf. Perfectly sighted in for any distance from 40 to 100 yards. Dead on confident. 

Again, I ran most of the way in the crunchy snow. It was very loud. By the time I got there, there were no skunks to be seen. I was about 50 yards away so I stopped. And I just stood there really still for about 10 minutes. Then a medium-size skunk came out, followed by big mama.

They were in a hollow tree about 30 yards from the big pile of old bridge material that makes up the raccoons condo.

The big ones stays by the hollow tree and the medium size one goes up to check things out. The entire time I’m tracking him with my rifle offhand, finger on the trigger, waiting for the opening where my cross hairs hit him in the brisket. Right when he gets to the top and he’s about to disappear from sight, I get my shot and whack you can hear the lead thump. He goes reeling backwards out of sight.

I immediately reload and go back to mom. She is heading for home. Stupidly, she stops turns and looks back up the hill before entering the hollow tree. Whoosh, Thump, big mistake.

I will likely I will try to get pictures tomorrow. I’m quite sure the big one made it into the tree. I thought I could see the smaller one up by the borough, but it was getting dark.

Everyone is coming out of hibernation and heading to eat refrigerated trash pandas…

Q, Apparently that’s what happens when you kill them and they fall into their den. 

I swear to God I saw a fisher the other night. Did the skunks get the two squirrels?

mike
 
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Nice shots!! It’s like you have a zoo there! With penny you do need to keep the local populations down to manageable level, trash pandas and skunks are bad news for dogs! Hopefully you have opossums that will clean up the aftermath for you.

At 200 yards the DWolf will have plenty of power to take out the skunk humanely with the 29 grain nsa! think it’s time to download that strelok pro app and do some validation at 200 yards! Hahaha 
 
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